


After All Is Said And Done

by flipflop_diva



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: Moving on when war is all you've known for a long time is much harder than people would think.





	After All Is Said And Done

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badger79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badger79/gifts).



> Written for the 2018 Exchange on Fic Corner.

It was so much harder than she had expected it to be.

In her mind, she had figured it would be like just picking off where sixth year ended. She’d go back to classes, to studying, to being the best. Sure, she’d have to find different friends since Harry and Ron were choosing to go straight into work at the Ministry, but Ginny would be there, Luna would be there. 

It should have been easy. It should have been simple.

But none of it was.

Studying, for the first time in her life, felt like work — work she wasn’t really sure she wanted to do. Her mind, no matter how hard she tried to focus, kept going back to those nights on the run. Sitting in the tent with Ron and Harry. Trying to stay alive. Hunting down Horcruxes.

Listening to theoretical ways to defeat the dark arts seemed so silly when she had spent a year doing that very same thing. When she knew exactly how to do it because she had done it and none of it was like the books (a thought that, no matter how true, still pained her just a little).

Escaping from Malfoy Manor, escaping from Gringotts, fighting at Hogwarts on the front line of the battle. How could she study when she had been through so much?

And the nightmares made it worse. She tried to sleep, wanted to sleep, but when she closed her eyes, she was back in Malfoy Manor, with Bellatrix Lestrange hovering over her. But in her dreams, she wasn’t saved. In her dreams, Bellatrix cut into her and it didn’t stop. It never stopped.

How was she supposed to study and learn when she had been through so much? It was the one lesson no one at school seemed to be able to teach her.

•••

It was so much harder than he expected it to be.

The wizarding world treated him like a hero. Everywhere he went, people stopped to stare at him, to point. Little kids ran up to him and asked for his autograph. Adults wanted to shake his hand and tell him how grateful they were to him.

It was like when he started Hogwarts in his first year but so much worse. Back then he had done nothing to deserve it. Now he had done everything to not deserve it.

He didn’t understand why they all couldn’t see the truth — it was his fault people died, it was his fault it had led to the confrontation that it had. If it hadn’t been for him, so many people he loved would still be alive, still be around.

Ron and Hermione kept telling him it wasn’t his fault. Molly and Arthur kept hugging him and checking to make sure he was okay and telling him how proud they were of him. And every time he tried to explain that he didn’t deserve their love, they just poured on more.

The only place he could get away was work. But even there, it wasn’t enough. Aurors in training were supposed to have a hard time. They were supposed to undergo rigorous training and be subjected to a little mocking and ridicule from their peers now and then. But instead he had the experienced Aurors asking him for advice, as if throwing one spell back at Voldemort could be worth more than thirty years of hunting down bad wizards.

He wanted to be treated normally, but it was the one thing he couldn’t have, and he worried that maybe he never could.

•••

It was so much harder than he expected.

He had grown used to being the sidekick over the years, but out there in the forest, out there in the tent, they had been a team. A real team. All three of them contributing their own strengths in making sure they took down the worst wizard the wizarding world had ever seen.

He had always known Harry would have to be the one to eventually defeat He Who Must Not Be Named, and he had not envied his best friend that at all. But he had finally been secure in his knowledge that he, too, could play a role in it all.

Except he had left them, had abandoned them, had run away like a coward, had left them on their own without caring whether they lived or died. Sure, both Harry and Hermione had forgiven him, many times over, and no one else seemed bothered by it, but it haunted him. The choices he had made. Letting his emotions rules his actions.

He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to forgive himself. He wasn’t sure he ever should. Maybe he deserved to have it haunt him, just as it was doing, every day and every night since he had made the decision to leave.

All he wanted was to take it back, to do it all over, but it was the one thing he could never have and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that.

•••

It was so much harder than he expected.

Not Voldemort’s defeat. That didn’t bother him at all really. Sure, his defeat meant the end of his own dreams. Not being the powerful right-hand man who commanded the Death Eaters. But truth be told, that part was a little relieving. He wasn’t cut out to be a Death Eater, to follow in the footsteps of his parents. 

All he really wanted was to live a more normal life. Make money, fall in love, live in a big house, have friends in high places. Be his parents without the Death Eater part.

But nothing was like that. He and Pansy broke up two days after the war ended. The friends he thought he could count on abandoned him. His parents were morose, gloomy, untalkative. The three of them sat around in Malfoy Manor avoiding each other and avoiding any mention of the outside world.

He would pick up the Daily Prophet and read about the Wizarding World moving on, getting back on track, but for the first time in his life, he wasn’t part of anything. And no one cared. And he didn’t know how to make them care. He didn’t even know what to do.

Go back to school? Go get a job? Go try and talk to the people he used to talk to every day?

He didn’t know. He was stuck. He wanted to move on, and he couldn’t, and for the first time in his life, he was worried he never really would.

•••

It was not entirely a coincidence that they all ended up at the Three Broomsticks together, but it wasn’t entirely planned either. It was the first Hogsmeade Weekend of the year, but Ron and Harry had only guessed that part and had each made the decision independent of the other to go visit and try and see Hermione.

Draco, for his part, had just needed an escape from his parents in a place that could be considered even a little comforting.

Ron, Harry and Hermione ended up at a table in the back corner, and Draco ended up at a table beside them, all four of them staring at their mugs of butterbeer and trying to figure out how to ask the others if they, too, were having a hard time or if it was just them.

Finally Harry broke the silence. 

“It will get better, right?” he said.

“It has to,” Hermione said.

“Of course it will,” Ron said.

Draco didn’t answer — it wasn’t like any of them were friends — but for some reason, knowing others felt like he did made more of a difference than he could have imagined.

It was harder than they had expected it to be, but none of them were alone. And that made the future more hopeful than it had been in months.

The four of them took a sip of their butterbeer, all of them lost in their own thoughts but all of them ready to face the future, no matter what it was about to bring.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this was a little more depressing than you probably hoped it to be, badger79! I was trying to paint a more realistic picture of what after the war meant to some of them, but I wasn't sure how to make a happy ending from there.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it anyway!


End file.
